Scottish Café
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The Scottish Café (Polish: Kawiarnia Szkocka; Ukrainian: Шотла́ндська кав'я́рня, Russian: Шотла́ндское кафе) was the café in Lwów (now Lviv) where, in the 1930s and 1940s, Polish mathematicians from the Lwów School of Mathematics met and spent their afternoons discussing mathematical problems.
Stanislaw Ulam recounts that the tables of the café had marble tops, so they could write in pencil, directly on the table, during their discussions. To avoid the results being lost, and after becoming annoyed with their writing directly on the table tops, Stefan Banach's wife provided the mathematicians with a large notebook, which was used for writing the problems and answers and eventually became known as the Scottish Book. The book—a collection of both solved, unsolved, and even provably unsolvable problems—could be borrowed by any of the guests of the café. Solving any of the mathematical problems was rewarded with often absurd prizes, such as a live goose.
The café building now houses the Universalny Bank at 27, Taras Shevchenko Prospekt.
[edit] See also
- Stefan Banach
- Karol Borsuk
- Marek Kac
- Stefan Kaczmarz
- Bronisław Knaster
- Kazimierz Kuratowski
- Stanisław Mazur
- Stanisław Saks
- Juliusz Schauder
- Hugo Steinhaus
- Stanisław Ulam
[edit] References
- "Though a Reporter's Eyes: The Life of Stefan Banach," Roman Kaluza
[edit] External links
- Scottish book
- Scottish book Web page at Home Page of Stefan Banach at University of Gdańsk website
- Kawiarnia Szkocka at the MacTutor archive
- Sheldon Axler's review of "The Life of Stefan Banach"
Coordinates: 49°50′09″N 24°1′57″E / 49.83583°N 24.0325°E
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